Canadian Humanitarian NGO & Canadian Lobster Fisherman involved In Water & Drip Irrigation Community Development in Mali, West Africa. Living Stories. Listening To Stories. Looking for Moments & Memories. Writes very poorly, and is oh so struggling to balance two very different lives.

Punch It In The Face Real Good?

I’ve read that line so many times on social media this week I am sick.

I’ve heard people ask,

“Where is the Church? Why are they not speaking up against racism and white supremacy?”

Where is the church? Are you kidding me? The church sends workers to every tribe, people, language and nation. They support ministries that assist women and children of every race in our own communities. The church preaches the message of love for all people weekly.

Certainly, church people have been influenced by culture at various times, but christians were leaders in destroying practices like the slave trade and widow burning in India. There are certainly individuals who hold racist opinions within, but that is not due to the silence of the church. Churches let all kinds of sly and slippery folks attend, even punch a person in the face kind of violence advocating people.

We can’t force people to practice what is taught anymore than we can police what people believe, say about virgin birth or miracles.

What is Jesus’ message?

The Parable of the Good Samaritan was what I grew up hearing. The sociocultural outcast, the one despised by the Jews, helped the beaten by robbers Jew. The religious Jewish priest who stepped around the bleeding Jewish man, refusing to assist this half dead man from his “own kind”, is the unambiguous moral villain. He is the sinner. The despised ethnic man was the true neighbor even though he experienced racism and exclusion at the hands of these very kind of people. The point being we are to do good indiscriminately for all, regardless of race, sex, or position.

I am sickened by nazi salutes.

I am sickened by, “Punch a nazi in the face.”

Do not repay evil for evil. Love your enemies.

I also grew up being force fed and yet, somehow, willingly sucking this spiritual teachings out of my churches spiritual tit. Because we know instinctively they are true.

Where is the church?

We are right here. Probably the only weekly public rallies in North America where loving our neighbors (all races) is actually taught sereval times weekly in our public assemblies.

We are right here, the ones celebrating and performing the interracial marriages in our community.

We are right here burrying your kids killed in gang wars, or by interacial violence.

We are right here, the ones sending workers to the countries where all these refuges are coming from. We are donating and sponsoring refugee families to come live in our towns as neighbours.

The church is right here, a few streets over from your house, singing, every sunday,

What are we singing? What have we been chanting out loud with our voices?

Jesus loves the little children.

All the children of the world.

Red, brown, yellow Black and white

They are precious in His sight.

Jesus loves the little children Of the world.

I’ve heard more, more consistently about loving people of all races from church, than i have ever heard from the media.

I might not be out in the streets, but feel free to do so.

My life, my actions, my practice have already been speaking, figuratively and audibly, and will continue to do so in my home, during my work and even more importantly, AT MY TABLE, MY VERY OWN TABLE.

My action is not to swing my arm in violence and hate at the face of those i desperately disagree with.

Racism, in my view, will not be cured by bullies and violence.

No, i won’t punch a nazi in the face, as it is a “sin” to do violence to another human being, even a sinful white supremacy human being.

I will not live or practice a half truth to try and “win”.

But i will stand against this. I have been.

I think the linked arms of religious leaders in a peaceful walk of opposition is a wonderful manifestation of our message.

Like me, i am certain they are horrified at the “punch a nazi” message.

J. R.R. TOLKIEN – PEACE IS NEVER FREE

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it."
J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

Top Rated

Pictures

Photo is attributed as, “The Graves Of A Catholic Woman And Her Protestant Husband Seperated By A Wall, Holland, 1888.”

Bones placed in Animistic Religious Ritual

Jean Claude spreading already fermented coco out to dry.

My son Ted with me on a return trip to Ivory Coast in 2009. His first time back in Ivory coast since his childhood. Coffee drying.

Some of my coco growing friends. A happy reunion in 2009. Man I miss these guys.

90 km In the Bush.Doing Drought Season Drip Irrigated Gardens.

View From the Pier in Segou.

Farming tools have not changed for these people for 300 years.

Our orange lady, who passed away.

By the Baffond on Niaradougou. By the Potato fields.

Road to Bankagooma Land

Storage Granery for Millet to feed the family though 9 months of drought in Sahel.